California's congressional districts

The U.S. state of California is divided into political segments known as California Congressional Districts.

Bi-partisan Gerrymandering

After the 2000 census, the legislature was obliged to set new district boundaries, both for the state Assembly and Senate and for Federal Congressional Districts. It was mutually decided that the status quo in terms of balance of power would be preserved. With this goal, districts were assigned to voters in such a way that they were dominated by one or the other party, with few districts that could be considered competitive.

In only a few cases did this require extremely convoluted boundaries, but the results are easily seen by examining the [http://vote2004.ss.ca.gov/ results of the 2004 election] , where a win by less than 55 percent of the vote is quite rare (five out of 80 Assembly districts, two out of 20 Senate district seats). The Congressional districts are even less competitive than the state districts with only three out of 53 congressional districts being won with less than 60 percent majority in 2004.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed placing the redistricting process in the hands of retired judges, which was on the November ballot as an initiative in a special election (called by the Governor on June 14, 2005), Proposition 77. The special election was held on November 8, 2005. However, the initiative was overwhelmingly defeated, with 59.5% No votes. All initiatives, including those proposed by the Governor's allies and several independent initiatives, failed.

In earlier elections, the almost evenly divided 10th district was a focus of national attention, owing to its balanced electorate with a slight Republican edge in registration and a Republican advantage in electoral participation. Since its creation in 1990, the district had been held by a Republican, Congressman Bill Baker, a former State Assembly member, for whom the district was designed. After several weak challenges to the seat by Democrats, the election was hotly contested in 1996 by a newcomer to politics, Ellen Tauscher, a candidate with sufficient funds of her own to be competitive against the incumbent. Receiving a great amount of grass roots support from local Democratic clubs and votes from moderate Republican women, her defeat of Congressman Baker was considered a great victory for what many consider a 'middle of the road' Democrat. Her district is now 'safe' (she won reelection with 65.8 percent of the vote in 2004) and the recent congressional election drew no national attention to California.

In 2006, the only Congressional seat in California to change hands was the 11th, east of the San Francisco Bay Area, which was taken from long-time incumbent Richard Pombo by political neophyte Jerry McNerney.

The 4th district, north of Sacramento, where Air Force veteran Charlie Brown challenged John Doolittle, was considered competitive, and Doolittle retained his seat with a margin of only 3.2% of the votes.

The 50th district, in the San Diego suburbs, where Francine Busby challenged Brian Bilbray, first in a special election to replace convicted felon Duke Cunningham, and then in the general election, probably would have been very competitive if Busby had not made an ill-considered remark that became connected to the locally-sensitive issue of immigration: she remarked that one does not "need papers" to vote. Indeed, California law "prohibits" poll workers from requesting ID under most circumstances. Voters need some sort of ID in order to "register" to vote, but not at the polls.) However, it was easy to interpret her statement as saying that illegal immigrants could vote.

Political Persuasions

Galleries

U.S. House of Representatives

References